“The implication of the doctrine of nonviolence,” Roy now believes, “is the moral dictum that the end does not justify the means. That is the core of the Mahatma’s message which is not compatible with power-politics. The Mahatma wanted to purify politics; that can be done only by raising political practice above the vulgar level of a scramble for power.”92 This passage represents the ideas Roy began to develop at a feverish pace in the last five years of his life. In a characteristically Gandhian manner, Roy wants now to purify politics by purging it of both the “struggle for power” and the party system itself. “Humanist politics,” he says, must be a moral force; “it must get out of the struggle for power of the political parties.”93 Only in these circumstances can political power be transformed into moral authority. Leadership must come not from corrupt party bosses, but rather from “detached individuals, that is, spiritually free men [who] cannot be corrupted by power…it is possible for the individual man to attain spiritual freedom, to be detached and thus to be above corruption. Such men would not hanker after power.”94 This preoccupation with the right use of political power and the need for establishing a moral basis for leadership was, as Roy acknowledged, at the heart of Gandhi’s thought.
What conclusions may be drawn from these critiques of Gandhi by two such sharply contrasting thinkers as Tagore and Roy? First, their responses to Gandhi illustrate the central position and pull of his thought and leadership. His ideas clearly dominated the movement for independence. Tagore and Roy are forceful but at the same time they are forced to acknowledge Gandhi’s centrality. Second, these three figures—Tagore, Roy, and Gandhi—may be viewed as constituting together vital currents of ideas in the mainstream of contemporary Indian political thought. But there were numerous other Indian thinkers during this period. Some, like Nehru, Tilak, Pal, and Aurobindo Ghose, have been mentioned above; others, such as Jayaprakash Narayan or Subhas Bose, have not.95 However, all have this in common: each enters into a rich dialogue with Gandhi, usually sustained over decades. The cumulative result is a vigorous national discourse that more often than not finds itself tested in political practice. Whether one examines political dialogues in countries of East or West, twentieth-century India is remarkable for providing such a fertile soil for the production of political ideas that then bear fruit in action.
The extraordinary feature of this discourse, evident in the thought of both Tagore and Roy, is the focus that is maintained on the ideas of freedom, power, and change. Gandhi sets the terms and boundaries of this discussion with his theory and practice of swaraj and satyagraha. Tagore engages in the debate over swaraj, underscoring the key themes of freedom as self-realization, the problem of political power, and the necessity of social change. Roy brings to the dialogue a Marxist economic perspective but later shifts to an un-Marxist emphasis on “spiritual freedom,” the corruption of power, and the importance of moral values in politics. The vitality and creativity of Gandhi’s thought appears in his original formation of the relationship between swaraj and satyagraha. This achievement is due to Gandhi’s unique ability to translate ideas into action. Neither Tagore nor Roy conceive a method of action that might use power to implement the value of freedom they so fervently advocate. Roy no less than Tagore is opposed to the evils of imperialism or of social injustice but his Marxist doctrine after decades of struggle proves impotent in practice. So it is precisely the connection between freedom and power that eludes both Roy and Tagore, even though they attack the problem of change from opposite directions. Gandhi’s use of power, evidenced in his way of connecting swaraj and satyagraha in the context of the salt march and the Calcutta fast is the subject of the two chapters that follow.
• CHAPTER FOUR
Civil Disobedience: The Salt Satyagraha
The plan of civil disobedience has been conceived to neutralize and ultimately entirely to displace violence and enthrone non-violence in its stead, to replace hatred by love, to replace strife by concord.1
—Gandhi, March, 1930
On March 12, 1930, Mohandas Gandhi, age sixty years, left his ashram at Sabarmati with seventy-eight followers, bound for the shores of Dandi, a small village on the coast of Gujarat in western India. Thus began the historic Dandi march and salt satyagraha, one of the most dramatic events of modern Indian history. The march covered over two hundred miles and lasted twenty-four days. Its specific object was to protest against the tax the British Raj had placed on salt. Under the regulations of the India Salt Act 1882, the government enforced a monopoly on the collection or manufacture of salt, restricting its handling to officially controlled salt depots and levying a tax of Rs 1-4-0 (46 cents) on each maund (82 lbs.).2 Gandhi defied this monopoly and so broke the law by simply collecting natural salt from the seashore on April 6. The broader object of the march was to spark a campaign of civil disobedience against the Raj in order to attain independence. The salt satyagraha, therefore, began with Gandhi’s act at Dandi, quickly spread throughout India as others followed his example, and intensified with his arrest on May 5. It then continued for almost a year until direct negotiations between Gandhi and Lord Edward Irwin, the Viceroy, ended the campaign.3
Those are the bare facts of the salt satyagraha: but it needs first to be set in its historical context. The Lahore Congress, which met in December 1929, affirmed swaraj as India’s national goal and sanctioned satyagraha or civil disobedience for 1930. But the Congress lacked any specific program of action, and so entrusted the campaign to Gandhi’s imagination. As 1930 dawned, Gandhi returned to his home, the Satyagraha Ashram at Sabarmati (near Ahmedabad) for inspiration. By mid-February, the essential “formula” for civil disobedience had come to him.4
Influence of Bardoli’s Tax Resistance on Gandhi’s Subsequent Strategy
When Gandhi considered the location and manner of resistance, the Bardoli satyagraha of 1928 provided a key precedent. In Bardoli, a district in Gujarat, a limited campaign of tax resistance was waged in a small area of the state, but it had assumed all-India significance. The Bardoli district or taluka consisted of approximately 137 villages, with a total population of about 88,000 and an area of 222 square miles. In 1927, the taluka received an increase of 22 percent in its tax assessment from the Government of Bombay Revenue Department. After several months of random protest and agitation, the peasants began an organized satyagraha in February, 1928 under the direct leadership of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, acting under Gandhi’s authority.5 This was a tax resistance movement limited to a protest against the property tax increase that the Government had demanded. It asserted that the tax official’s report recommending the increase was unjust and inaccurate. For several weeks the Government insisted adamantly that there was no need to reconsider the assessment. But pressure from the satyagraha eventually forced the Governor, Sir Leslie Wilson, to appoint an independent committee of enquiry and the committee’s report favored the peasants’ position. The final consequence, therefore, was a dramatic victory for Bardoli with only a small increase of revenue and a substantial blow to the Government’s authority and credibility.
The degree of non-cooperation obtained by Patel and Gandhi in Bardoli was so extraordinary that it must rank as a textbook example of successful small-scale satyagrahas. Throughout the campaign, press coverage, even in the pro-Government Times of India, was extensive and sensational. The effects of the satyagraha were portrayed in the most graphic terms under the headline GOVERNMENT MACHINERY PARALYSED IN BARDOLI: REVOLT OF THE PEASANTRY.
The article, reported by a special correspondent in Bardoli, took note of:
a situation there that is unique in the history of the British administration of India, and one that must sooner or later result in bloodshed or abdication by Government in the Taluka. The leaders of the no-tax campaign have succeeded in producing such a complete paralysis of the machinery of Government in the Taluka that not a finger can be moved, not a person stirs out of his house without their knowledge and consent. Even the officers of Government themsel
ves are practically dependent for supplies, conveyance, etc., upon the good will of Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel and his “volunteers,”…The power of the social boycott, the wide net of Mr. Patel’s followers and informers, the complete success that has hitherto attended the campaign and the utter helplessness of the Government has given to the people a vivid realization of their power [which will produce] … a crisis that the country has rarely experienced.6
On July 4, one week before Leslie Wilson left Bombay for Simla and an urgent conference with Lord Irwin on Bardoli, the Times of India reported: BOLSHEVIK REGIME IN BARDOLI. MR. VALLABHBHAI PATEL IN THE ROLE OF LENIN:
Iron discipline prevails at Bardoli. Mr. Patel has instituted there a Bolshevik regime in which he plays the role of Lenin. His hold on the population is absolute …. Though Mr. Patel is the chief figure at Bardoli, the brain behind the agitation is Mr. Gandhi, who from his Ashram at Sabarmati is in careful touch with the situation, while Patel himself constantly seeks his leader’s advice.7
Government correspondence at this time confirms that the Bardoli situation was seen in desperate terms,8 and some of the consequences of this for the Raj’s reaction to the salt satyagraha will be observed below. However, the point here is that the campaign, due to the dramatic press coverage received, scored a propaganda victory out of all proportion to its size. The fame of Bardoli’s triumph over the Government spread throughout India and Sardar Patel’s prestige soared within the Congress.
Gandhi’s reaction to the impact of Bardoli is instructive. After four years (1924–28) of relatively uneventful leadership, he found in Bardoli the key to his strategy for 1930. At first he was notably cautious about the wisdom of Bardoli confronting the Government on this issue and relied on Patel’s judgment. But as the serious purpose and determination of the peasantry became clear, Gandhi thrilled at the prospect of this combat with “Dyerism.”10 “Will the people of Bardoli stand this last trial?” he asked as the climax of the satyagraha approached. “They have already staggered Indian humanity. They have shown heroic patience in the midst of great provocation. Will they stand the greatest provocation that can be offered? If they will, they will have gained everything.”11 Shortly after this, Gandhi toured Bardoli with Patel and returned convinced that a rare demonstration of the effectiveness of satyagraha was being staged. He begins to write often on “lessons of Bardoli” and these signify the guidelines that apply later to the salt satyagraha. In early August, at the moment of the “settlement” with the Government he wrote:
Bardoli is a sign of the times. It has a lesson both for the Government and the people; for the Government if they will recognize the power of the people when they have truth on their side and when they can form a nonviolent combination to vindicate it …. Nonviolent energy properly stored up sets free a force that becomes irresistible. So far as I have been able to see, there is no doubt that the settlement has been wrung from an unwilling Government by the pressure of a public opinion that was ever gathering force in geometrical progression.12
Shortly after he wrote to C. F. Andrews that the “Bardoli victory was indeed a victory for Truth and Nonviolence. It has almost restored the shattered faith in nonviolence on the political field.”13 Indeed, the Bardoli satyagraha did nothing less than restore Gandhi’s own faith in the efficacy of nonviolent action in the quest for swaraj. He repeatedly returned in 1929 to the implications of Bardoli:
The Government did not change its policy in the case of Bardoli, it was only compelled to yield under the pressure of organized resistance of the Bardoli peasantry and it is bound to do so again wherever such resistance is well organized.14
It is only gradually that we shall come to know the importance of the victory gained at Bardoli… Bardoli has shown the way and cleared it. Swaraj lies on that route and that alone is the cure …. 15
It was just the extraordinary means discovered by non-cooperators [at Bardoli] that were employed by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel with consummate skill and absolute faithfulness that influenced the Government, and it is just these extraordinary means which I would like the country to adopt, and I know that it will reach its goal as surely as the simple peasants of Bardoli did.16
In February 1930, therefore, on the eve of the salt march, it was the example of Bardoli’s success that remained foremost in Gandhi’s mind. In Bardoli, he recalled:
The forces of violence were hushed in the presence of nonviolent action. It remains to be seen how the all-India struggle for independence will shape. The law that governed the Bardoli struggle which centered around a local grievance will govern the greater struggle for independence. The partakers will have to be strictly nonviolent; they will have to visualize the grievance of slavery as the Bardoli peasant visualized the grievance of an unjust settlement; they will have to submit to the strictest discipline even as the Bardoli peasants did.17
The Bardoli example appealed to Gandhi, then, for several reasons. First, there was the moral drama of an oppressed peasantry fighting valiantly but nonviolently against an unjust government authority. This was precisely the style of combat that Gandhi savored. He was struck with the extraordinary discipline and courage that Patel’s forceful leadership elicited from the Bardoli peasants. This inspired him to inject into the subsequent march the martial imagery of a nonviolent army armed with “truth-force.” Moreover, the response of the Bardoli taluka encouraged him to utilize this same area and population for the salt march: not only did he march through many of the same villages that had been mobilized in 1928, but he also recruited heavily from this group. Finally, he had been struck by the Raj’s response to Bardoli: the Government of Bombay had been overcome by the results of the settlement and frightened by the implications of the satyagraha.18 Gandhi fully appreciated the meaning of this and sought now to exploit it further on an all-India basis. In all these respects, Bardoli was a key source of inspiration for what followed.19
If all of these factors produced substantial continuities between the Bardoli and salt satyagrahas, at least one large difference should be emphasized. This stemmed from the nature of Sardar Patel’s kind of leadership, which dominated much of the Bardoli satyagraha and in certain respects contrasted sharply with that of Gandhi. The contrast suggests, in fact, a key difference between exclusive and inclusive types of leadership, the former associated with Patel and the latter with Gandhi. In Bardoli, Patel perceived the struggle persistently in terms of a “we-they” dichotomy, with the Government representing an enemy that was not to be trusted. For Patel, nonviolence was a tactic that should be used to humiliate and demolish the adversary; it was a potentially effective way of exercising coercive power and scoring political victories. For Gandhi (as observed above), nonviolence was more than just a tactic, it was a creed. The implications of this difference between Gandhi and Patel become clearer as time passed, and became manifestly irreconcilable over the issue of the partition of India, examined in the next chapter.20
Yet, in an embryonic sense, the differences are apparent in a contrast between the two types of leadership in 1928 and 1930. Like Patel, Gandhi had an authoritarian tendency that found satisfaction in militant confrontations. His commitment to the creed of nonviolence, however, brought his inclusive attitude so forcefully into play that it transformed the nature of the confrontation. The opponent in the conflict was not perceived as “the enemy,” in Patel’s sense, to be beaten by tough tactics and superior power. Such a perception could lead to duragraha. Gandhi saw his adversary as someone whose sense of humanity could be awakened through the use of nonviolence. He trusted his opponent, believing that no individual was totally incapable of re-examining his own position to see a standard of justice. The logic of this view led to a sense of inclusiveness, evident both in the salt march and Calcutta fast.
The essential point concerns the nature of satyagraha and its integral connection with swaraj. The aim in satyagraha is not merely to prevail but to transform the conflict in such a way that all parties may be uplifted in the process by
being brought closer to a sense of their common interest. The dynamics of the conflict resolution should humanize rather than degrade the participants. When this happens the means are consistent with the end and one moves toward swaraj. The Bardoli effort was certainly successful, yet Gandhi worried throughout about a slide into duragraha that would see the sole goal as winning against the Government by any means necessary. He resolved that the next satyagraha could do better than Bardoli: it would be pure ahimsa, reaching the Raj as effectively as the Indian people.
Preparation for Satyagraha: Debate and Decisions Over Issues and Methods
Mahatma Gandhi Page 15